Thursday, Sep 24, 2020
This cartoon was written during a time when the company I was with was bought and merged into another airline. During the merger I gradually became ever more disgusted with the process as I watched a form of tribalism flourish. If you’ve ever been on a family road trip with a sibling, then you know the scene; mom and dad are trying to figure out something important like a rest stop, dinner, the next hotel, but you and your sister or brother are bickering in the back and finally one of them whips around flushed and screams, “if you two don’t pipe down NOW this car is turning around and we’re driving HOME!” That’s how I kind of felt as a pilot involved in a merger.
The C suite and upper management, not that they're above pettiness, is handling high level finance and negotiating with an alphabet soup of federal agencies while the pilots give each other dirty looks in the halls. Each side brings together deep teams of experts, lawyers, and consultants to craft a reason why their group deserves, (insert issue here) and why the other group doesn’t. And this goes on for days, weeks and months while rumors feed off each other. A pilots’ connection to somebody behind closed doors becomes the currency of the day. I am not diminishing the importance of the issues, namely seniority lists. A person and by extension their families, quality of life, and a laundry list of career issues hang in the balance, but in the, ah-hem, scope of a multi-billion dollar merger, and as the arguments inevitably become more personal, it all starts to feel, well petty.
With all that said, if you want to talk seniority list integration, let’s take it out to the parking lot, shall we? (now where are those brass knuckles?)
Oh and yes, the picture itself was an absolute blast to draw and remains one of my favorites. I was trying to capture a cloistered, smug, masters-of-the-universe, private clubby feeling of walnut-paneled wealth.
The C suite and upper management, not that they're above pettiness, is handling high level finance and negotiating with an alphabet soup of federal agencies while the pilots give each other dirty looks in the halls. Each side brings together deep teams of experts, lawyers, and consultants to craft a reason why their group deserves, (insert issue here) and why the other group doesn’t. And this goes on for days, weeks and months while rumors feed off each other. A pilots’ connection to somebody behind closed doors becomes the currency of the day. I am not diminishing the importance of the issues, namely seniority lists. A person and by extension their families, quality of life, and a laundry list of career issues hang in the balance, but in the, ah-hem, scope of a multi-billion dollar merger, and as the arguments inevitably become more personal, it all starts to feel, well petty.
With all that said, if you want to talk seniority list integration, let’s take it out to the parking lot, shall we? (now where are those brass knuckles?)
Oh and yes, the picture itself was an absolute blast to draw and remains one of my favorites. I was trying to capture a cloistered, smug, masters-of-the-universe, private clubby feeling of walnut-paneled wealth.